News and views

If you frequently buy and sell property, you may want to keep a close eye on Inland Revenue’s review of some property tax rules that was announced in September 2019. One area being targeted is the use of the ‘main home exemption’.

Buying a house is one of the major milestones in many people’s lives, right up there with getting married, having a baby, and retiring. Signing on the dotted line of a Sale and Purchase Agreement is a momentous occasion for most people.

As the year draws to a close, getting your head around yet more changes to the law doesn’t seem like a really festive thing to do. Unfortunately, the government has decided to signal that more changes are on the way to the Residential Tenancies Act in the New Year. The changes notified will affect landlords and tenants across the country.

When a relationship comes to an end, the divvying up of relationship property is no walk in the park. Often it can take months, if not years, for disagreements to be resolved. It’s an emotionally charged time, and it doesn’t help that the law in this area has some relatively blurred lines when it comes to the division of relationship property.

New Zealand has changed significantly over the last half-century. The Property (Relationships) Act 1976 was drafted at a time when couples generally married young and pooled their resources to buy a house as early as they could, a time when ABBA’s ‘Fernando’ topped the national charts and Fred Dagg and Footrot Flats made Kiwis laugh out loud.

Tiny houses are becoming extremely popular nationwide as property prices rise. Less energy consumption, lower environmental impact and cheaper housing, while still leaving room to develop other buildings on a single normal-sized plot. Win-win, right? Not quite.

Change is on the horizon for overseas property investment regulations as the second and final stage of the review of the Overseas Investment Act 2005 gets underway.

More tenancy law reform has arrived. Bear with me before rolling your eyes though — these new rules will finally give much-needed clarity to tenant-landlord liabilities for property damage.